The smart TV standard has been designed to provide an enhanced experience to the viewer over the traditional TV. A smart TV typically has two separate inputs: (a) a traditional TV port for receiving traditional TV channels from a TV content provider, e.g., cables or satellite provider; and (b) an Internet port for receiving TV channels from the Internet. The viewer can select at any given time whether to view a channel through the traditional port or through the Internet port. While the traditional TV has not changed much over the recent years, it becomes apparent that the essence of the smart TV resides in the Internet mode watching, which provides many enhanced features to the viewer, features that do not exist in the traditional mode of watching, such as chatting with others while watching a TV channel, accessing and activating features of Facebook and Twitter while using the TV screen and remote control, displaying contents from mobile devices on the TV screen, and more.
As can be seen, the smart TV combines features of a personal computer with features of the traditional TV. However, there are still differences between the typical computer and the TV set that make some of the smart TV functionalities less convenient. For example, while the typical personal computer is designed to support sessions that are dedicated to a specific single user who has presently logged in to the computer, the smart TV is naturally designed to support simultaneous viewing of multiple users. More specifically, while the computer allows specific definitions for the currently logged in user, such as loading of a respective profile for the user, and his privileges, this is not the case in the smart TV. In this respect, the knowledge of the present user has many additional aspects in the personal computer. For example, knowledge of the presently logged in user allows an instant messenger application to load a list of friends of this user, or to activate the respective persistent cookies associated with that user in order to give an immediate access to the specific user email account.
To summarize, while the smart TV combines functionalities of a personal computer, it is still poorly suited for multiple login and logout of users. Normally, the smart TV does not have a keyboard, and even in cases where a keyboard is used, it is highly unlikely that people will log in and log out every time they turn on the smart TV, or when they simply leave the room and others come in to watch the smart TV. This problem raises a need for a better solution, i.e., enabling the smart TV to automatically determine the one or more current viewers, in order to adapt its content to those present viewers. One purpose of this content adaptation is, for example, a parental control. Another exemplary purpose is the adaptation of the advertisements to the viewers.
Presently, the Smart TV does not predict who is currently watching the TV, and does not adapt the content to the present viewer. There are known, however, techniques that are based on biometry like face recognition, shape recognition and others, and these techniques are even used for gesture operation of TVs. Moreover, these techniques require use of complex and expensive equipment, special conditions and requirement in the room such as illumination, and require the viewer to be visible. Moreover, the appearance of the viewer may change from time to time, for example, he may wear glasses, or grow a beard, cases that may disturb and corrupt the determinations by these techniques. Clearly, such conditions cannot always be met, and therefore there is a need to provide a solution which is independent from biometry.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a system and method for determining by a smart TV the identity of the current viewers.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide said system and method that are independent from biometry.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide said method and system that are simple in structure, and do not require use of complex and expensive equipment.
Other objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent as the description proceeds.